Jaguar Sportbrake review (24/04/2013)

I have raved about the rebirth of Jaguar. The company has re-emerged from years of stagnancy, under its original British ownership and subsequently as part of Ford, to well-being under the Indian industrial giant, Tata.

It is ironic that in the month Baroness Margaret Thatcher was buried, an iconic British car brand that she nearly killed off is now glorying in its most profitable era.

Such was the late British prime minister’s determination to break the trade unions that blue-chip brands such as Jaguar and Rolls Royce, Bentley, Rover, and Mini are in foreign ownership. Millions of cars are built in the UK, but they are not British-owned.

The Indians have reinvented Jaguar as a meaningful, vibrant and profitable luxury car.

Thatcher privatised Jaguar in 1980. The company was initially profitable, under John Egan, but hit the skids due to feeble model development and a stock market crash in the US, its main export market. Ford took over and spent a pile of money, but never made any, and Tata took control in 2008.

That was the year Jaguar unveiled the car that has become its saviour — the XF, a multiple award-winner and critics’ favourite.

This week, I tested the long-awaited Sportbrake estate. The Sportbrake has been designed — like all current Jags — by Ian Callum, and, though it is bulkier than its saloon sibling (everything rearward of the B pillars is new), it still looks svelte, what with the tapering roofline and the muscular rear end, which Jaguar says was inspired, no less, by the superstructure of luxury yachts.

The design is beneficial: rear-seat passengers get an additional 48mm of headroom, while the seats offer both a 60:40 split-fold function and integral ski hatch.

Remote-fold levers inside the load-space opening allow the seats to be folded flat, quickly and easily, creating a massive cargo space.

The design of the Sportback created problems, not least of which was the added weight and the need to not compromise the torsional integrity of the car, to maintain its rolling refinement.

This has largely been achieved by ditching the conventional coil-spring rear suspension and by the adoption of a self-levelling air-suspension system, instead.

Jaguar says — and I couldn’t argue with them — that this is the right solution for a variety of problems and has not affected the car’s beautifully balanced handling and ride characteristics.

They’ve also thrown in a powered rear door, which operates at the touch of a button and they say — for those of you with a fondness for golf — that bags and clubs can be stowed sideways, although maybe not if you’ve got a putter the size of the one Adam Scott used to win the Masters last week.

Refinement is a Jaguar watchword, and, once you immerse yourself in the be-stitched leather upholstery and enjoy the touch and feel of the leather-and-chrome decor, you know immediately they’ve lost no ground here.

On top of that, features like the automatic gear-change bezel, which miraculously raises and lowers itself from the centre console when you turn the car on and off, continue to amaze and please in equal measure. The same goes for the powered air-vent covers.

Under the ‘power bulge’ hood rests the familiar, 2.2-litre turbodiesel, four-pot engine.

There’s some 160 bhp on tap here and that produces a 0-100 kph time of 10.9 seconds and a top speed of 200 kph, which is not Earth-shattering (especially when compared to certain German rivals), but the 5.2 l/100 km (54 mpg) fuel consumption might ease buyers’ concerns about performance.

The eight-speed, automatic ZF gearbox is a joy to use, but if you’re a driver whose right foot is on the heavy side, you will notice it zipping up and down the cogs with tiresome regularity.

Keeping a softer touch on the loud pedal, however, delivers much more satisfactory results.

All told, this is a fabulous car. If you wanted to be picky, you might say it is not as dynamically good a drive as the saloon, but you’re still left with the impression that it’s a lot better than most of the opposition.

Throw in top-drawer JD Power customer satisfaction survey results and startlingly good residual prospects, and you have a car that will not only repay you in terms of driving enjoyment, but in hard cash when you move it on.

The Jaguar revival continues apace.